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T O P I C R E V I E W

LM-12

Florida Today has this article about the final JFK visit to Cape Canaveral 50 years ago today.

Kennedy himself had begun to express some doubts privately, had recently proposed cooperating on moon missions with the Soviet Union and was awaiting the results of a high-level review of the nation's military and civil space programs.

"So this was Kennedy preparing to make a decision on whether to continue with the Apollo program or not," said historian John Logsdon, author of "John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon." "And I think this visit rekindled his enthusiasm for the program."

onesmallstep

And on the day before his death, JFK visited Brooks AFB in San Antonio, TX to dedicate the new Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, with a mockup of the X-20 Dyna-Soar as a stage prop.

It was his last official act as president. He also went inside to talk to some test subjects sealed inside a hypobaric chamber, telling them they were helping future research in spaceflight.

LM-12

This is a photo of JFK with Gus Grissom and Gordon Cooper at Cape Canaveral in November 1963.

micropooz

Here's a cover for JFK's final visit to the Cape:

It's a Bob Rank Velvet Cachet hand cancelled at the Cape on Nov. 16, 1963, from the collection of the late Jane Beville.

Joel Katzowitz

I have Guenter Wendt's security badge from that visit on November 16. It's one of my most prized artifacts.

J.L

And I have one that was used by a NASA photographer that day.

LM-12

The KSC 50th Anniversary Poster series includes one poster on the visits by President Kennedy to Cape Canaveral.

President John F. Kennedy visited Cape Canaveral on three separate occasions, twice in 1962 and November 16, 1963. He presided over a Project Mercury ceremony to award John Glenn the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, toured the Launch Operations Center complexes and rode in a helicopter over the Merritt Island Launch Area, which was under construction to support the Apollo Program. On November 29, 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson renamed the Launch Operations Center the John F. Kennedy Space Center.

Cozmosis22

White House press release three days prior to that Cape visit.

LM-12

The USS Andrew Jackson was a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine.